


Light, more light

by beeawolf



Series: Damerons all the way down [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Past Torture, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Poe is Leia's Real Son, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, porgs in the galley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 01:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14345490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeawolf/pseuds/beeawolf
Summary: "General Organa is looking up at him with this shrewd expression, and he can see right away that she knows. She knows exactly why he’s walking, why he’s stopped now, what he’s hiding, and his already-thundering heart beats faster."(In which Poe faces some truths he's been avoiding.)





	Light, more light

**Author's Note:**

> "Light, more light  
> gathers in the room. No sleep, not tonight."
> 
> \- Adam Zagajewski, from “Lullaby”

            In some other universe this would be the thrill of his life – this is the _Millennium Falcon_ , the ship Poe’s heard stories about since he was a little kid, and here he is pacing its hallowed, slightly rusted halls – but mostly Poe just feels tired and numb. He’s walking to soothe his own restless nerves and jumpy pulse and it’s hard to think too far beyond that.

            He can’t remember when he last slept, only that it didn’t go so well. The triple bunk he shares with Rey and Finn isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s fine, he’s fine with that. It’s just, the two of them are sleeping now and he isn’t, and he isn’t going to. And even if he was going to, he knows he’d only wake them up halfway through the sleep cycle.  

            Which is nothing to be ashamed about, he knows that. Nightmares are just a consequence of survival. He’s probably stayed up nights with all of Black Squadron at one point or another, just sitting there telling dumb jokes or dragging themselves out for a late night walk. Everybody’s got their share, and if Poe’s had more than usual lately, well – he figures he’s about due.

            But Rey and Finn are _Rey and Finn_ , both of them so young and kind and worried about each other and so _new_ to all of this, and he’s _Poe Dameron_ , damn it, and he –

            “Commander Dameron,” says a quiet voice, and Poe turns too quickly, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

            General Organa. She’s standing there in the faint light from the galley, and Poe wonders with a sudden, self-conscious jolt how long she’s been there. How many times he’s walked past her.

            “General,” he says, and waits. He’s so tired. He has trouble looking at her straight on. He’s not sure if the two are related.

            She steps out into the hall, falling into step beside him wordlessly, and it’s like they’re walking around the base at D’Qar again, like she’s about to give him orders, send him out on some mission he’ll come crawling back from with victory clenched in one bloody-knuckled fist.

            Only she doesn’t. Give him orders. And he sort of wishes that she would. Instead she stays quiet, and her steps are still a little slower than they should be, and Poe has to shorten his stride.

            “Trouble sleeping?” she guesses, after they’ve circled once – there isn’t a whole lot of it, this hall – and Poe gives a shrug.

            “Still getting used to the sleep cycle,” he says.

            The look she gives him says, _I know you’re lying, Dameron,_ and he feels a prickle of fear. But she doesn’t call him on it yet.

            “Me too,” she says instead, with a softness that makes him glance quickly at her. She’s wearing a distant expression. “There’s a lot I’m still getting used to.”

            “Yeah,” he says after a beat, and then echoes her. “Me too.”

             He tries to ignore the guilt sinking his stomach. It’s almost always there lately, heavy and sickening, making it hard to eat or to keep anything down if he does. And he deserves that. Every wince at every lingering bruise, every flinch at every sound and every bad dream and every sleepless night – he’s earned it all. It’s the least he can do, to shoulder that blame. It’s just about the only thing he can do.

            Poe shivers, looking away again. And maybe it’s a trick of the light, maybe he’s just running on too little sleep, but – but the hall suddenly looks too long, too wide, too bright. Like a different hall on a different ship. He blinks, once, twice, but it won’t change back, and the guilt twists into fear and Poe stops dead in his tracks, just staring. His breath comes up too sharp and his pulse pounds in his skull and he, and he –

            “Poe.”

            General Organa is looking up at him with this shrewd expression, and he can see right away that she knows _._ She knows exactly why he’s walking, why he’s stopped now, what he’s hiding, and his already-thundering heart beats faster.

            She reaches for him, and Poe’s vision tunnels – a black-gloved hand and a low, mocking voice – and disappears. It flickers back when his knees crack against metal.

            General – _Leia_ kneels in front of him, and he blinks at her, and the ground is hard and cold and he’s cold and he’s cold and he’s cold and he—

            “Uh,” he says, and tips forward. She catches him by the shoulders, and they haul him up by the arms and they kick his legs out from underneath him and he stares up at that dark mask and he knows, he _knows_ he’s never, never, never going home.

            “ _Poe_ ,” says Leia. “Look at me.”

            And he does. He blinks at her in the sudden dimness. She’s dragged him into one of the cargo holds, he realizes, propped him up against some crates of who-knows-what, Han Solo’s or someone else’s, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. It’s cramped and he can’t move, arms pinned to his sides, ribs aching from one too many blows, but he _won’t tell them_ he won’t –

            “Look at me,” says Leia again.

            He does, he does. He leans back, away from her hands and onto his heels, ready to spring up again just as soon as the feeling comes back to his legs. He focuses on Leia’s face. She looks worried, but there’s something else too, something horribly like resignation. Like she knew, she _knew_ he’d break down on her one of these days. One crash too many. The thought is like shrapnel in his still-pounding heart.

            He manages to tell her, “Sorry.”  

            “Just breathe, Dameron,” Leia answers, kneeling down with him again. “That’s an order.”

            So he does. In, out, in, out. His breath shudders. And his ribs really do ache, but that’s not – that’s from the hangar explosion, maybe. Or the General shooting him. Or anything, really; it’s all blurring together now, overlapping, and Poe knows his breathing is a little too fast.

            It’s just that it’s too dark in here. He smells blood, his blood, but he knows he isn’t bleeding. He knows he’s not there anymore – that dark room and the gloved hand and blood sticky in his hair – he’s back with the Resistance now. Has been for days and days. He’s back home – the Resistance is always going to be home, no matter where they are, no matter how few of them are left – and he isn’t bleeding anymore.

            The problem is just that he _remembers_ , and keeps remembering all the time. Bleeding into the sand, broken glass embedded in his arms, cuts all over that he couldn’t really feel. Couldn’t really feel anything but the cold, the sky dripping dark, the sand freezing except where his blood spilled and his jacket was gone and he looked and he looked for Finn-the-hero-the-miracle-Finn, for BB-8, for his X-wing before he remembered it was gone and they were gone and everything was gone. His feet slipped and struggled in the sand and he –

            But he isn’t in the sand anymore either. He knows that. He knows.

            He breathes. He looks up at Leia and he’s home, not safe but home, never safe but that’s fine. You don’t join the Resistance because you want to be safe. He’s never going to be safe again but he’s home and he’s alive and he _hurts._

            Tears sting his eyes abruptly, and it’s startling, embarrassing. But Leia doesn’t seem bothered. She reaches out for him again, and this time Poe stays still. He lets her touch his arm, and rest her hand lightly on the small of his back. He lets her pull him into a loose embrace right there on the ground, dropping his forehead to rest on her shoulder and it’s _embarrassing_ but he can’t pull away from her. He can’t.

            And she says: “Okay, flyboy. Time to tell the truth.”

            So he does.

            After he gets his breath back. After he swallows his shame sufficiently to speak, and tips himself backward to settle fully on the floor because his legs won’t hold him up right now, and – and General Organa definitely shouldn’t be sitting on the floor of the cargo hold with him, that seems wrong, but she does and he can’t bring himself to protest.

            He tells her the truth. He tells her _everything._ Because yeah, he’d made his reports, but he hadn’t told anyone all of it yet. Hadn’t even really admitted it to himself. How bad it was. Still is.

            And he’s not stupid, Poe Dameron, he’d known full well that all of this was going to be a poison at the back of his mind waiting to paralyze him if he didn’t take care of it quick enough. But there had been so much to do and they had _needed_ him – he’s the best pilot in the Resistance, they _always_ need him – and there wasn’t time to sit around in medical, to follow up on the recommended counseling.

            He hadn’t told the General about that either, the counseling, although he suspects she knows anyway. But he tells her every last bit of it now. Sometimes haltingly, sometimes in a tangle of words tumbling over each other way too fast. He talks and talks and he keeps giving her weird, unnecessary details. He keeps worrying someone will walk by and hear the best pilot in (what’s left of) the Resistance losing his mind in a cargo hold. But he can’t seem to _stop_.

            “The cuffs were so cold,” he tells Leia. “I don’t know what they were made out of. But they were really cold, the whole room was really cold, probably the whole ship. I think they thought I was shivering ‘cause I was scared but I wasn’t – no really, I wasn’t – I was just so damn _cold_. I don’t know why they keep the place like that. Maybe the armor gets stuffy. Maybe they were just trying to freeze me to death, I don’t know...”

            Leia never once interrupts him. Never once tells him to get to the point. Because this _is_ the point: that it happened to him. That it is still happening to him. That maybe it will always be happening to him, in some corner of his messed up head. And that he has to live with that now.

            When he gets to Kylo Ren his voice is slower, less sure. He doesn’t want to talk about this with her. Not Leia. She shouldn’t have to hear the details. She shouldn’t have to know. But he can’t _stop_ , he can’t stop telling her every stupid thing.

            “He had gloves,” Poe says. “Black gloves. A mask. That was black too. And...silver. There was this red light, too, but I don’t think that was really the mask, I think it was some sorta reflection. I just...wasn’t seeing so great at the time. They, uh, they roughed me up pretty bad. But you know that already.”

            Poe swallows, remembering the sharp-metal taste of blood in his mouth, and then he keeps talking. “He reached toward me and he sort of just – moved his hand and I – and I tried to stop him, but he –”

            “Poe,” says Leia, speaking for the first time since he’d started. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”

            He stares at her. Her eyes are sad. Poe feels a sudden and immeasurable guilt, for making her sad when she already has enough sadness for a lifetime, for three lifetimes. Han. Luke. Her son. Her son. Her son.

            “I tried,” Poe repeats, because it’s important that she knows this. “I tried to – to build a sort of wall. In my head.” He gives a shaky laugh. “Kind of a rush job. I don’t know how to do that sorta – that stuff, you know that, but I _tried_ , and he – he just broke it right down. He broke right through. To everything. Everything he wanted.”

            “Poe,” says Leia again, gently, and she reaches out to take both his hands in hers, probably because he keeps gesturing with them jerkily and they shake and they shake and they shake. He thinks he should feel ashamed, but the embarrassment from before is fading into a sort of calm settling over him, slow and steady. Because he knows that Leia’s seen her share of trauma.

            And that’s what this is. And he knows that too. And his hands don’t shake when she holds them.

            “Leia, I’m so–”

            “Stop apologizing to me,” she cuts in. “You couldn’t have stopped him. You did the right thing. You survived. It’s over. You’re _here._ ”

            Poe gazes at her steadily. He nods.

            Leia watches him closely, like she’s looking for something she isn’t finding. She sighs, eyes drifting to one of the crates, and says, “I’d ground you if that still meant anything. For now...well, let’s call it a symbolic grounding.” Her lips twist in a wry smile. “You can consider yourself off-duty until further notice.”

            The shrapnel digs deeper, sudden and searing. Poe drops his hands from hers.

            “No,” he tells her. Thinks something more like _nononononono,_ actually. Because he can help – and okay, he doesn’t know _how_ , not yet, but he _can_. He’ll make himself useful, pull off one of his patented Poe Dameron miracles. If – you know, if those still work these days. The truth is that he’ll do _anything_ for her, for all of them, if she only gives him a chance.

            “Yes,” answers Leia. “It isn’t a punishment.”

            But he knows that it must be. Because he deserves a punishment.

            He doesn’t realize he’s told her this aloud until she gives him a long, exasperated look.

            “I did shoot you, Dameron. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

            “No,” Poe says again, flat and honest. “It isn’t. A whole lot of people are dead because I made the wrong call. Again.”

            _Dead heroes. No leaders._ The words rattle around in his head with the rest of the mess that’s in there, louder whenever he sees Rose, the expression on her face when she’s fingering the pendant around her neck, when she thinks no one is looking. _Dead heroes. Dead. Dead._

He remembers he called death _luminous_. Once. For L’Ulo. But that feels like a long time ago. He had been trying to make them all feel better about it, the empty coffin, the empty space. He had been echoing other people’s words, he had been trying to – to tell the truth. You try, you try to do something good and brave and you try to remind everyone why it matters – but really that’s all you end up with, isn’t it? Empty coffins. Too many. More than they could ever fit on the Falcon, probably. So many names to remember now, and no coffins to hold them at all.

            And nothing about that is _luminous_. And none of it is enough. 

Leia is still watching him, quiet. He wonders what he must look like. He thinks he should probably get up off the ground now, but he doesn’t move.

            “You made the call you thought you had to make,” she says at last. “But we’ve been over that, Poe. This isn’t about that. This _isn’t a punishment_. I’m giving you some time to reflect. I want you to talk to Doctor Kalonia as soon as possible. And when we have the resources again, I want you to follow up on that counseling. But most of all I want you to _rest_ , so you’re ready when we need you. Do you understand?”

            Poe nods automatically, even though he doesn’t, not entirely. If she needs him then why not let him _help,_ let him make up for all the deaths he’s carrying, the dead-ends and failures...

            He remembers the blood in the sand and the heat that rose up to overtake the cold, suffocating and dry. Back when he didn’t know about Finn being okay, back when he thought he’d finally messed up badly enough to fail the whole damn galaxy.

            And yet all Poe could focus on for some reason was the idea that maybe he’d never fly again. That maybe he was going to die here in the desert instead of out there with the stars, and how fundamentally _wrong_ that was, and how there was nothing he could do about it.

            “When he was in my head,” he says suddenly. “When he was in my head, he – it was like – I felt like –” He breaks off. There’s no way to explain what that felt like. There’s no way to explain the way it still feels now. This lingering, intangible ache, burrowed deep into his skull and flaring out all the time like some malfunctioning distress signal.

            “I know,” Leia says, and she looks like she does. “There was nothing you could do.”

            Poe forces a bitter smile. “That keeps happening lately.”

            She reaches over and rests a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Welcome to my world, Commander.”

            And Poe sighs. And slowly, he stands. And carefully, he helps Leia to her feet. She’s walking without the cane now, but he still feels protective, worried, and he tries never to show it. He knows she’d hate it.

            But he remembers how – it feels so long ago – how she told him that soon enough she would be luminous.

             “I’m sorry, General,” he says, and Leia points a threatening finger at him.

            “Poe. I told you to stop apologizing to me.”

            He raises his hands in surrender. “All right, then – thank you,” he says.

            “That’s more like it.” She sighs, casting another look behind them at the crates. “Hell if I know what’s in there,” she adds. “Knowing Han we’re probably lucky none of them exploded.”    

            Poe lets out a startled, hoarse laugh, and Leia turns back to him with tired amusement in her eyes.

            “Go to sleep, Dameron. See Doctor Kalonia when you wake up. And we’ll go from there.”

            “That an order?” he asks, exhaustion slowing up his words at last.

            She grants him a faint smile. “That’s an order.”

            And there’s something weirdly soothing about that.

            He still doesn’t want to bother Finn and Rey, though, doesn’t think he can handle another conversation right now if either one of them wakes up – Finn with his dark, serious eyes and Rey with that eerie look, like she knows things he doesn’t know about himself. The General notices his hesitation.

            “Try the galley,” she suggests. “It’s swarmed by porgs, but it’ll be quiet. I’ll tell your droid to find you there if he comes looking.”

             BB-8. He’ll be worried when he finishes charging, if he finds Poe missing. He gets that way lately. Since Jakku. Poe feels another stab of guilt about that, but exhaustion tamps it down almost immediately.

            It’ll be okay, he thinks vaguely. One way or another. Even if it’s not.

            “Thank you,” he says again, then pauses. “What about you?”

            “Oh, Chewie and I have some catching up to do,” Leia replies dryly, and waves him off. “Go.”

            So he does. The galley _is_ swarmed by porgs, all roosting together and probably violating every health code in the galaxy. But it’s sort of nice to see them like that, all crowded and cozy in a way that makes Poe’s eyelids feel heavier. A few are huddled together on the lone bunk against the wall, and they stir and blink their huge eyes in his direction as he approaches.

            “Hey,” Poe tells them. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna make you move.”

            He settles himself carefully on his side, slanting his feet toward the edge of the bunk to keep from disturbing the little things, and watches as soon enough they close their eyes again.

            And soon enough, Poe does too.

**Author's Note:**

> I am new to Star Wars; please look with compassion upon my mistakes.


End file.
